Keeping Time

A few years ago, I came across another man’s identity. I didn’t steal it by any means, I’m not a sleaze. I didn’t betray him, I’m not his friend. I just came upon it one day, laying there on top of a pile of trash. The man, who in the interest of safety and morality I’ve decided to call “careless man”, was a wealthy 30 something who lived in downtown Manhattan. That day I picked up his name and social security number, and since then it’s sat inside my wallet behind my drivers license, each day fading a little more.

I tell you this story because every once in a while I enjoy checking in on careless man. I don’t steal money from his bank account or anything along those lines, and he has no idea that I have his information. Sometimes I just like knowing that I have this man’s life in my hands. Granted, in this day and age, stealing his identity would be more of a nuisance than a life-ending event, but then again, it’s the little things in life that matter, right?

I haven’t told anyone that I have this god complex; I feel they might lose trust in me. But every few months or so, I see what he’s doing, what he’s buying, you know, the kind of stuff stalkers do.

Turns out his wife died a few years ago.

So every year, on his anniversary, I write him letters posing as his wife, saying that I wrote the letters before her death. In the letters, I tell him of the affairs that his wife had with first names that I pull out of my old high school yearbook, hoping that careless man will know these men. I think I’m slowly tearing this man’s life apart, because last time I checked in on him, he’d taken a new found interest in firearms.

Sometimes I just think I’m the funniest guy I know.